


The Path

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Demon AU, Demon!Jack, Demonic Possession, Dubcon Kissing, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Temporary Character Death, Vaguely Southern Setting, homophobic violence, kind of Southern Gothic I suppose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 15:30:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11923839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: "The voice that comes from the shadow sounds closer than possible, as if it is standing right in front of him, rather than looking down on him from the perch up in the tree. Rhys’ lips are dry and he’s trembling, legs threatening to run or give out, body ready to shake into a puddle of meat and bone, but he tries to stand firm as the shadow atop the trees slowly condensing together, tendrils of smoke coiling and braiding together into something more definite."----Rhys meets with a crossroads demon to make a deal.





	The Path

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece from back in December that I'm pretty proud of! I had an idea that Rhys and Tim were secretly an item (in a time/place where that relationship is not acceptable) and Tim gets killed as a result. Which prompts Rhys to make a deal with a demon that.....doesn't end well for anyone. Except Jack.
> 
> Please heed the warnings and enjoy!

The gnarled oak cuts a silhouette across the dying orange of the sunset sky, clouds patterned in a warped quilt of cloud that mirrors the reddened leaves lying against the dirt paths of the crossroads. Rhys’ boot’s crunch into them as he walks towards the oak, his bloodied fingers working over each other fearfully.

The trees surrounding the area are still full and green with their leaves, some of the magnolias blooming pink and white with flowers—but the oak is barren, branches snarled and blackened and cracking the sky into little pieces.

Rhys’ boot snaps a twig in half, and he gasps, eyes shooting downwards. He finds his sight fixed on the image of the green wood snapped in half around his shoe, his body suddenly crawling and frozen in place. Every last fiber of his body suddenly screams at him to not look up, to turn around and go back home and never look back. His throat bobs in terror as he slowly, agonizingly, tears his eyes away from the ground and looks back up to the oak.

A new shadow sits in the tree now, cut against the streaked red of the sky. Its edges are defined but its vaguely transparent, like a black veil caught in the gnarled branches—but it moves purposefully, not with the warm breeze of the wind.

Not to mention the mottled, yellow eyes piercing straight through Rhys’ soul.

“ ** _What’s a good little boy like you doing out here so late_**?” The voice that comes from the shadow sounds closer than possible, as if it is standing right in front of him, rather than looking down on him from the perch up in the tree. Rhys’ lips are dry and he’s trembling, legs threatening to run or give out, body ready to shake into a puddle of meat and bone, but he tries to stand firm as the shadow atop the trees slowly condensing together, tendrils of smoke coiling and braiding together into something more definite.

“ ** _I can smell the upbringing on you, pumpkin_**.”

The thing—now perched on one of the gnarled, scarred bough like it's a throne—steals the vague form of a human, disturbed by long claws and horns that tip over the wispy hair and curve like a steer’s. Its face splits into a fiendish grin full of long fangs and through it Rhys can almost see the blood of the sunset. He tamps his roil of fear down with a sharp clear of his throat.

“Demon, I—“

“ ** _Don’t be so formal, kiddo,_** ” a deep, thick laugh rumbles through the humid air, “ ** _you can call me Jack._** ”

Rhys stutters, the demon’s chuckling shuddering through his very bones. His voice lodges in his throat, unable to get any words out. He can only stare, watching as the demon— _Jack_ —slips down from the topmost bough, liquid in his movements as he slides onto the branch hanging just above Rhys’ head. Those yellow eyes glow brilliant as they browse Rhys with interest, burning into the paper-thin bravado the young man was trying to hold up.

“I…I just….” Rhys manages little more than that, fear and sorrow swelling up inside of him, emotions vibrating even more in the toothy presence of the demon.

“I need you…I need you to bring someone back…” Rhys’ bloodied fingers twitch against his flannel shirt.

Jack moves like ink in water, the outlines of his form flowing and changeable, spilling out into the spaces between the air particle like he knew them, intimately, in a way that Rhys couldn’t fathom. But the eyes are constant burning pits of putrid gold, floating and fixed in space as Jack descends fully to the ground, the dead leaves fluttering in his wake.

“ ** _Tell me what happened to you, sweetheart_**.”

Rhys’ heart hammers as he gets a better look at Jack, blood throbbing in his ears. In some places he’s solid but not, like smoke contained within gauzy curtains, billowing outwards and occasionally escaping in tiny curls. There is movement beneath even the surfaces of his face, his hands, his horns, where everything seems the most stable.

Rhys wills his lips to form words, even as heat rises in his cheeks and tears prick at the corners of his eyes.

“It’s…I….T-Timothy….” Rhys whispers, voice hoarse. The scene is drying on his brain, seeping between the cracks and stained permanently into memory.

“We were  _together_ …and they…they caught us…Timothy told me to run as fast as I could and hide. When I came back….when I came back he was lying on the ground.” Rhys choked on a breath, fresh new tears spilling over the pink tracks on his cheeks.

He could still see it—the little copse where they had gone to meet, a narrow path wrought in the grass through dozens upon dozens of secret footsteps, now torn and scuffed about. Blood covering Timothy’s face, his nose and jaw crushed, bruises all over his arms and chest, those strong tan arms now limp and lifeless against the splattered azaleas.

“They….they  _killed_  him…” His body trembled, face twisting into a mask of anger and sorrow. “I can’t….I can’t do this alone…I need him back….please.” He scrubs his hand, still tacky with Timothy’s blood, over his eyes before rising his puffy red stare to meet Jack’s.

The demon hums, the sound sour honey and prickling on Rhys’ spine.

“ ** _Wow._ Humans _. Always killing each other for idiot reasons_** _._ ” He scoffs, shifting in the air until he’s suddenly standing just before Rhys. The young man starts, but Jack is already strafing to the side with a ghostly laugh, circling around him with vapor trailing in his wake. Rhys coughs. Jack smells like rotten eggs and tobacco and molten steel.

“ ** _You know what makin’ a deal with a crossroads demon means, don’t you sugar?_** ” Jack murmurs, his voice crawling like spiders on Rhys’ skin. He swallows around the rock in his throat.

“I….I know.”

Jack’s breath is like a blast of hot air on his neck, and Rhys can feel those yellow eyes boring into his skull, taking him apart. Jack swirls back around to face him, smoke rising from his long horns like two dwindling candles. His grin is fiendish, cutting like a knife in the shadow of his body.

“ ** _It means I get to have you._** ”

“I know.”

Jack’s eyes narrow, his face shifting closer to Rhys’ so the young man can see every bloody fleck in his irises, the steady shimmer of all shades of yellow and gold and brown. A wispy claw ghosts down Rhys’ neck, and he tries his best to keep his throat from quivering. It feels like a spiderweb against his skin, or the touches one swears one feels in the haze right on the verge of sleep. Rhys wets his lip, trying to be brave as he watches the demon back.

“ ** _All right, kiddo. You’ve got yourself a deal._** ”

Jack’s getting closer, his hot breath dragging the haze of his brilliant teeth in and out, his form spilling out even further beyond the bounds of his being, beyond what could be grasped as vaguely human, swarming all around Rhys’ until the young man can see nothing but those fiendish eyes and teeth, and can feel only the hot crucible of the smoke around him and the ghostly touch of Jack’s lips as he floods against Rhys’ mouth.

* * *

Timothy’s body had been lying in state in Rhys’ solitary home, a dish towel draped over his face. Rhys’ hadn’t  been able to look at it since he’d half dragged, half carried his lover’s corpse home. He didn’t want to dwell on the image for too long, how Tim’s perfect face had been crushed in by cruel blows, how his temples were split and bloodied, how his endearing little smile had been broken apart. How you couldn’t even see the light dusting of freckles on his skin beneath the bruises and bloodstains.

No. Rhys only wants to think about the beautiful face that he knew, the one that would be returned to him soon.

_Two days time,_ Jack had promised, once the sealed kiss was nothing but a burn on Rhys’ lips,  _two days from this moment, and he’ll come back to you._  Then Jack had evaporated into the air, fading off into the last dregs of the sunset and leaving Rhys alone in the humid swirl of dead leaves.

He sits now on a chair near the edge of the bed, his hand scrunched into the blankets right next to Tim’s slack, purpling fingers. He tries to be patient, tries to stay calm, even as the slow tick of the bedside clock winds him like a winch. His foot taps anxiously against the scuffed hardwood floors, his eyes moving over the soft, cat-patterned cloth of the bedsheets.

The breath nearly leaves him when he sees one of Timothy’s fingers  _twitch_.

Rhys freezes, eyes fixed on his dead boyfriend’s hand. Slowly, he can see the paleness, the putrid dead color slowly retreat, replaced by a return of blossoming tan that’s like a welcome spring to Rhys’ frozen eyes. His breath barely whistles through his teeth as he grasps Timothy’s hand, and  _yes_  he can start to feel warmth flooding back into the digits.

Suddenly, Timothy’s entire body tenses, spine arching upwards off the bed before falling back. A deep, raspy breath of air graces the young man’s ears, the fabric of the towel covering Timothy’s face sucking inwards against an open mouth.

Rhys lets out a coarse sob, tears flooding into his eyes as his fingers quickly tear the towel up and away, and—

What greets him is not Timothy’s face.

Or it is—those familiar freckles remain, as well as that soft patch of hair on his chin and the general cut of his nose and jawline are the same, but—

But everything is  _sharper_ , his features distorted and twisted into a mask of maniacal pleasure and triumph, hair wild and ruffling in the absence of wind, canines curling slightly over his grinning lips as a pair of glowing,  _yellow_  eyes burns through Rhys’ heart.

The chair crashes to the floor as Rhys leaps up and away from the bed, letting out a terrified yowl as he stumbles backwards on trembling legs. Tears cloud his eyes, breaking and spilling down to his chin as he shakes his head

“W…Where…. _who are you_?” Rhys cries, his hand flung forward in a desperate attempt to protect himself as—as  _Tim_  rises from the bed. The smell of blood and tobacco and petrichor fills the room, snaking around Rhys’ legs and rooting him in place as the man approaches him with a straight backed confidence that Tim had never had. Tim’s body stretches out his arms, flexing and fisting his hands with a mad gleam in those yellow eyes.

“ ** _I told you,_** ” comes the voice that confirms Rhys’ worst fears, “ ** _two days, kiddo_.”**

**“** N…..no….” Rhys shakes his head, twisting his fingers into the hair on the side of his head as panic and revulsion trembles up into his throat. “I….what did you… _where’s_ Tim?”

Jack’s laugh fills the room, stifling up the space left between his stench and the suffocating walls. His yellow eyes sweep up and down Rhys’ body, Tim’s tongue flicking out to lick over his chapped lips.

“ ** _Little Timmy’s in here, babe. He’s just riding in the backseat for now, but I promise you. He’s still in here_**.” Jack tapped a finger against his temple, trailing a long nail down his sharpened cheekbones.

“T….Tim…?” Rhys whispers, eyes wide. Jack gives him an encouraging smile and nods.

“ ** _He wants you bad, sweetheart….but he also wants to tear apart those asshole who killed him. Good thing I’m willing to help out with both, huh_**?  ** _Oooh, it’s good to have a body back!”_**

Rhys heart pounds in his chest, weights holding down on his ankles as he shakily takes a step away, but Jack moves as quickly as he did before, lunging forward and grabbing Rhys’ wrist with one clawed hand, while the other seizes the young man around the waist. Rhys lets out a scream as Jack presses their bodies closer together in a mockery of the secret lover’s embraces he and Tim had shared in the past.

“ ** _I’ll tell you, Rhysie, there’s nothing more satisfying than a rough fuck after butchering some humans. We’ll string their intestines all over the magnolia trees. It’ll be a sight._** ”

“No… _No!_ ” Rhys screeches, thrashing against Jack’s hold, “You..you said you could have  _me_! We had a deal! We had a  _deal!_ ”

Jack’s laugh pierces through the air, the demon’s hold tightening harder on the young man’s body.

“ ** _And I_ will  _have you kitten. I’ll have you in the bed, bent over the table….you get the gist of it…_** ”

“No…that’s not what I meant! I didn’t want this! No!” Rhys sobs, body going limp as his knees threaten to give out. His head is swimming, horror and guilt at what he had done making him feel sick to his stomach. Snot and tears run down his face he hangs back boneless in Jack’s arms, helpless prey before the demon’s will. Jack’s hand leaves his wrist, which flops numbly to his side as Jack’s claws grasp at Rhys’ chin, tilting it forward until Rhys’ teary eyes meet Jack’s burning yellow ones.

“ ** _Don’t tell me you don’t want this, kiddo. You’re the one who asked for it. Little Timmy’s back to life, and all he has to do is let me hijack his body every once and awhile.”_**

Rhys whimpers pathetically as Jack brings their lips closer together, the hot, smoky breath that presses against his mouth now undeniably, unavoidably  _real_. ****

“ ** _C’mon, sweetheart. Let’s get killing._** ”


End file.
